


Songs of Men

by versus_versus



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M just to be safe, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, after Maedhros's death, moderately graphic wounds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4152834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versus_versus/pseuds/versus_versus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When his brothers are gone, Maglor wanders the world. The elves may be mostly gone, but he finds it easier to interact with men. Their lives are short, and it's easy to avoid getting attached to them.</p><p>At least, that's what he tells himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Maglor is no longer insensate with grief, he slowly, carefully carves a final eight-pointed star into the hardened leather of his left vambrace. Seven of them arc across his wrist for his father and his brothers. The smattering of other sigils that the years have given him to carry span the rest of the leather, those for the friends and family he’s lost.

When he is finished, he walks in a daze. He has left his armor with the twins. He does not know where he will go, but he knows he will not need it there. He carries his travelling gear, and cannot sing as he walks for the fresh wounds in his throat. His eyebrows were burned nearly away, his hair singed, his skin blistered. The surface wounds will heal soon enough, but he cannot sing, not yet.

He leaves the twins his harp as well as his armor. Perhaps they will find use for them.

His knives he keeps.

 

Humans quickly become his favorite. They do not know him as one of the Dispossessed. If they perhaps know his story, it is nothing but that: a story. Should he fail in his interactions with them, their lives were but a dying spark in the flames. He loves them for the briefness of their lives, he is thankful they do not last longer. He tells himself there is not enough time to become attached, but a small part of him doubts.

The first time it happened, it was a little girl. She wandered the woods as he crept about a human homestead. They had food, animals. He had been sneaking in for days, taking what little food he needed and leaving gifts, repairing things. Though he might not have been the son of Feanor most renowned as a craftsman, he had learned more than enough in his youth to repair what little problems the humans had. He moved silently, more shadow than elf.

When he found the girl, she was crying quietly, moving through the trees in a way that said she’d already realized she was lost and tried to run home, only to wind up exhausted. She drifted like a little ghost, carrying a small bit of cloth in her hands. The woods had grown deeper, darker, older around her, and the smell of her fear was palpable.

He followed her, watching. He had quickly grown accustomed to moving through the trees, much like his Silvan cousins. When she sat down, curling up in the roots of an ancient tree, sniffing and trying not to cry, he hummed an old song, a lullaby he hadn’t thought of since the twins were young.

Without his harp, it was the best he could do, he could not sing yet. Hot air had scorched and scarred his throat as he had screamed after Maedhros…his brother had gone without a lament, without so much as a memorial. He would sing it himself when he could do it justice. He had sung one for each of his brothers, for his father, his uncle, his cousins. So many dead, and he the only one to sing them properly to the Halls.

The girl heard him and fell still, looking up into the trees for the source of the song. When she spotted him, she curled a bit more, as though he might not see her. She was ever so young, especially in the eyes of an elf. Hardly even out of the womb, for what are five years to an elf?

He bent and offered her a hand of inhumanly spindly fingers, still calloused from his weapons and his harp. His words were gentle, but her face said she couldn’t understand. When she finally gathered the courage to speak, he recognized a sister language to Adûnaic, but cannot speak it himself. He sketched a crude drawing of the homestead in the dirt, and the girl looked up at him with eyes as wide as eggs. 

He carried her on his back, humming all the while. She was tiny, birdlike. Her bones were fragile, and he could feel them through her delicate skin as she clasped her arms about his neck and twined her fingers in his hair. He frowned slightly as she pulled on the dark strands, trying to resituate herself on his back as she babbled in her own language. Tiny fingers tentatively poked the points of his ears, and shock ran down his spine. He nearly dropped her with the wrongness of it, but managed to remind himself that she was but a child. Instead, he made a noise of distress and shook his head. Her hand withdrew as though burned and she grew silent, at least until he started humming again.

It was near dark when they arrived at the edge of the forest, near the homestead. He could hear a woman shouting, the same word over and over again. The girl’s name, perhaps. His cloak, a thing of shadow, billowed around him, still full tiny charred holes and the scent of ash from the rent in the earth that ate his brother’s bones. He gently let her down, pointing her homeward.

She held her hands up as if to say ‘stop’, then tugged his cloak, pointed at him, and pointed at the ground. Then she ran, as fast as her legs would carry her. He lingered near the forest’s edge for a time, then disappeared, returning to the small grounds he had claimed as his own. He never saw the girl return, towing her mother, with one of the season’s first apples in her hand.

 

If he had kept track of time, he would have known the girl was nine by the time their paths crossed again. The harness on her father’s plow had finally given way, and he was at a loss. Seeing the ruined harness as he crept through the shed-like barn, Maglor had slung it over his shoulder and taken it to the yard, where he could spread it out to work. 

The heavy leather had split after many years of use, tearing along long-dried cracks. He sighed and began singing. His voice would never again be what it once was, the once airy tone more alike to stone and earth, but it would suffice. He began singing the pieces of aged skin back together, sinking into the song of repair and restoration. The layered leather grew back together, as though it was a piece of living skin, and he was drawn from his reverie by a small gasp behind him.

As he ended the song and stood, prepared to run at the little one’s first shriek, her eyes grew wide and something in her expression snagged on a memory. She was taller now, but she stepped forward into the moonlight silently. The smile that slowly spread across her face was wider, no longer full of the empty spaces of missing teeth. 

They sat on the wooden fence in companionable silence, sharing a chunk of thick, oat-filled bread and an apple. Eventually, she broke the silence and pointed to herself, saying, “Teera”. He looked at her, this child, and his heart wrenched with fear. She trusted him, for some strange reason, she trusted him even though she was no more than a child. He couldn’t give her his mother name, he couldn’t bear the pain of hearing someone call him Kano. Maedhros’s voice still echoed in his ears, and it had been so long since anyone else had called him by his mother-name. “Mag…” his own name caught in his throat.

The girl smiled and repeated it quietly, offering him the bread again. “Mag.”

And that was the beginning. He returned again that week, then the next. Soon he was there near every night, bringing small gifts in return for the food they shared. Rabbits, small game he could trap, or edible plants from the deep forest, he slowly began to feel that his debt was paid for the food he had taken over the years. For the girl’s part, she slowly taught him her language. It took time, but languages had always been one of his strengths. In return, he taught her to hunt. She was small and fleet of foot, and though she never could have kept up with him at a run, she could soon trail him as he tracked a target. He never asked what her parents thought of her roaming the forest, and she never told him. She returned home with fresh meat and leather often enough.

He picked the language up over a few years, and the girl grew taller and stronger. One day, she brought her brother’s bow and shot, and Maglor laughed for the first time in years as he taught her. She could stand properly, she listened well, but the draw was much too heavy for her.

That was the turning point. He taught her to use a slingshot, something she could manage, while planning a smaller, lighter bow. He explained the process to her as he gathered and prepared the supplies he would need, and she began taking her own kills home to her family. Before long, she had a deadly aim with her slingshot and she grew like a weed.

There came a day that she walked with him and he knew something was wrong. It took nearly the whole day to draw the answer from her, but when she finally opened up an icy lump of anger dropped into his stomach. Her uncle, she told him, had followed her the day before. He had touched her, grabbed her, and pushed her down. He had threatened her, swearing he would kill her if she told her parents.

The cold fury that sank in gripped Maglor with the beginnings of battle madness he hadn’t felt in years. He promised her she would be safe with him, and that any time she was afraid she could come to him. She returned home with several rabbits that day, but he did not return to his camp. He walked the forest, protective fury pooling in his chest. When it finally emerged, it came in the form of a song, calling to the animals of the forest, the trees and the beasts. They heard him, and followed.

The man was inconspicuous, but they found him retrieving water from the river. The wolves of the deep forest stalked him as a pack, howling their intent and sending fear into his heart. He ran for the settlement, hearing the bays of the pack on his heels. A tree root caught his foot, sending him sprawling to the ground as the beasts came for him, massive monsters of shadow and anger. Teeth snapped, claws raked his legs.

The shadow that saved him was the wind, whispering threats in his ear, telling him he could scream but that none would hear him, swearing to end him if he did not stop his transgressions. The hand that clamped over his mouth was inhumanly strong, the voice rough and strange with an accent he couldn’t place. When the shadow let him go, he passed out.

The girl came to see Maglor the next day. She mentioned that her uncle was bedridden and incoherent, speaking of monsters and shadows, of wolves that followed the orders of something infinitely more terrifying. She said it matter-of-factly, no questions asked. He looked at her differently then. Physically she was no longer a child, as he knew when she smelled of iron, but he had never thought of her as an adult. It seemed as though he had carried the lost babe home to her mother only days before, not years. She was nearly a woman, full grown to her adult height. She needed to protect herself, and for the first time in years he was reminded of how fragile humans were.

He finished her bow, sealing it after months of drying. He worked under the cover of night in the rafters of her father’s barn. The man’s tools were easily accessible, easily returned, and the air was dry. It was a compound recurve, a practical thing of horn and wood that she was finally strong enough to draw. It wasn’t long before he began to teach her how to hunt with it. Months turned into years, and they were easy companions.

Her people left him gifts in return for the things he repaired. They laughed at her when she said she knew the spirit that walked the lands, but they couldn’t deny her hunting skill. They couldn’t explain where she had learned, and though they tried to deny his existence, they were forced to admit there was something fey about the girl they couldn’t understand.

They often spoke of her life, her friends and family, but he refused her details of his own. Once, he had told her they were all dead. A truth, but for his mother, and for all he knew she might be as dead as the rest of his family. She spoke of her family, her infrequent companions in the village. The day she told him of her betrothal, her face split wide in a joyful smile that struck a chord in his heart. She begged him to come to the wedding, and he promised he would, although she would not see him.

He went and observed the celebration from silence on a rooftop, hidden by the worn colors of his cloak and the cover of darkness as the bonfire grew. He watched her dance with her husband in the flickering light and he knew she would be alright.

He saw her infrequently after that, hunting with her less and less. She brought him the man she married to introduce him, and although he had a sense of joyful humor from the man, there was also reluctance, even fear. 

The next time he saw her, he could feel the new life before she told him. She was expecting, and the emotions of anticipation and nervousness rolled off of her skin like an animal. He reassured her that she would be fine and the baby would be healthy, speaking words of comfort in a language she couldn’t understand. When she left, he wondered at the possibility of her having a child when…surely she was little more than a child herself? He was unsettled, but reminded himself that humans lived life so much faster.

When the babe was born, she brought him the child and asked for his blessing. He sang the lullaby he’d hummed to her when she was little more than a babe herself, and she left with the child. First it was one child, then two, then three. Three children…he wondered to himself at the childbearing abilities of mankind. The fourth child came much later, and then what must have only been a few years later her children were having children of their own.

He saw her infrequently, but he watched over her children and grandchildren when they walked the forest. She taught them much of what he’d taught her, and they lived comfortably. Occasionally he would find gifts, and he always did what he could for the family. Years passed, but time felt like water to him. The world he had come from had always moved forward like a river, but here it was like a pond, still and comfortable.

The youngest child, a boy, hunted the woods more often than the others. Even as he grew into a man, he still spoke to the forest, listening to his mother’s stories and exchanging gifts with the one she still called ‘Mag’.

He was the one that came searching for Maglor, hunting in earnest on a cool day in spring. The elf followed him in silence, eventually responding to his summons.

Elf and man stood apart from each other, the silence stretching. Eventually, her son found his voice. “You…are still here.”

“Yes.”

“I came to tell you…” The man’s expression wavered. “Mum is gone. She….she died yesterday.”

Maglor heard the words, but they fell on ears that had long grown accustomed to painful news. His expression didn’t change, but the man could have sworn his eyes glinted. “Thank you for coming to me.”

“We’ll…we’ll be burying her tomorrow. If you wanted to say goodbye.”

The silence stretched, then, “I will go with you.”

They walked through the forest in near silence, the man nearly as quiet as his mother and the elf making no noise. The gathering of humans Maglor found inside the house parted as they saw him, dropping their voices to fearful whispers.

Her body, small and fragile as it had been in her youth, was laid out in a pine box. Her skin was wrinkled and spotted with age, but the ever-lively pulse he had grown accustomed to didn’t beat beneath it. He looked her over with an expression that the humans around him found unsettling. He crossed an arm over his chest and bowed, lingering only a moment longer before turning. The expressions around the room ranged from confusion to terror, but he ignored them and caught the youngest son’s eye before leaving.

He returned the next day, standing at the edge of the woods as her sons and grandsons carried the pine box from the house and lowering it into the hole that had been dug before filling it. Her granddaughter, a tiny little thing that looked so much as she had when she was younger, planted a tiny tree with her mother’s help. Some words were said, and the ceremony was over. People returned inside, only her youngest son remaining outside in his warm cloak. Silence fell again.

He sang. Her song was sad and sweet but happy, strong at heart. Her soul wasn’t destined for the Halls of Mandos, she was a mortal and there was no telling where they went when they passed. So he sang for her, a lament entirely unlike those he had sung before. It was full of sorrow, but also hope and uncertainty. And the tree that had been planted, it responded, growing impossibly quickly. 

And then it was done. She was dead and gone, her children aging, her grandchildren growing and having children of their own. Then her children were gone, and her great grandchildren believed he was no more than a story. He had stayed too long. 

He packed his things and moved on.


	2. Chapter 2

He could smell the blood and rot on the breeze before he came upon the open expanse and the putrid mess that was scattered across it.

Even far away, he recognized he hellish stench of a battle, or at least a skirmish. The bodies left to rot, their innards to liquefy and seep into the ground, where no rain could truly wash away the gag-inducing odor of rancid meat. In time, the remaining gristle would dry and stick from the land as though the ground was punctured flesh, spines of bone littering the landscape. Eventually even the bones would fall to dust, and leave nothing but the hungry land behind. For now, though, the smell was fresh.

Something drew him along. Perhaps it was the familiarity of it all, the number of times flesh and bone had been bared to the air by his own hand. Perhaps it was morbid curiosity. He told himself he was looking for anything useful, and although the idea of robbing the dead was repellant to him, would it truly be robbery if he put them to rest in return? He felt no need to turn away from the task before him. Perhaps fifteen, twenty bodies were scattered about, and there was no sign of someone returning to put the dead down.

For elves, it was different. For elves, all elves but him, at least, Mandos waited for them beyond the cold shock of death. Feanor and his sons, they had excused themselves from such a fate with their oath, and Maglor’s eyes prickled at the thought of his brothers.

Men had it far harder, he thought. The fate of men was not for them to know. Perhaps Eru had a true fate for them, perhaps they were sentenced to the void. None would ever know, or none alive would.

It had been recent, but the birds had begun to descend. Some of the slowly rotting eyes of the dead looked up at him, their empty gazes strikingly familiar. He looked around him, picking his way through the slaughter, wondering when bloodshed had lost its ability to disturb him. When had death become such a close companion?

Men almost had it easy in comparison. Their lives were so easy to end, either accidentally or on purpose. Elves were much harder to kill, and he’d found himself in the unique position of ‘oldest elf in middle earth’.

He walked among them. The blood and mood speckled his boots, but he felt there was some sort of reason for his actions. He followed some sort of instinct, a gut feeling he couldn’t explain.

He sang. Perhaps these men didn’t deserve a song, perhaps they were nothing but marauders. Still, he felt it was right.

Somewhere among the dead, there was a noise. A moan of pain, hollow and echoing. He pinpointed the source and approached, light footed but still singing to make his presence known. He bent to sit on his haunches at the man’s side, cutting off the song.

The man groaned, the sound reverberating through the metal of his helmet. Maglor reached out gently, unsure of the extent of the man’s injuries. The helmet peeled away slowly, crusted blood and bodily fluids sticking his hair to the rest of the internal dome. Still, the injuries were minor. As Maglor swept the grime and gore from his face, he found that the man was, in fact, no more than a boy. Even by the standards of men, he was young. Maglor continued to examine him, he discovered the real source of the injury. The helmet had done its job. The leather breastplate he wore had not.

The boy’s eyes were full of tears as the elf gently peeled the breastplate back to examine the damage. “Ma…?”

The gash in his stomach was deep, too deep for him to heal. He could offer the boy little. The song on his lips had faltered, but he picked it back up as the boy stared up at him, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

The boy looked at the knife at his hip with pain in his eyes. He looked up at the elf, trying to form the words, but either his mouth was too dry or his courage finally deserted him. Looking at the boy, Maglor could tell it was the latter. A short lifetime spent walking toward the unknown, and he was afraid of the end, the final leap.

Men had the right to fear the end. Eru’s gift to them was the way they would never know what waited them. Maglor knew what awaited him, either the Halls of Mandos or the Void, depending on the mercy of the Valar and how his father’s Oath was interpreted. Maybe that was why he hadn’t done the same as Maedhros.

He hummed to the boy, held his hand and listened to the sticky rattle that ripped through his chest with each strained breath. The boy almost cracked a smile as he closed his eyes and listened.

Without hesitating, Maglor pulled the blade from his belt and ran it across the boy’s throat with a single fluid motion, leaving a curve like a perverse smile that quickly spilled red down his chest. The few spurts of blood it produced were weak, the last desperate beats of a failing heart. The boy’s eyes never opened, but his mouth curved up to match the swipe across his throat.

He let the boy’s head fall and stood, wiping the crusted blood and bile from his hands on the small portion of the boy’s tunic that was clean-ish.

Mercy. That’s what it was. Looking at the boy, he remembered time he wished he’d had enough courage to give the dying mercy. Celegorm had practically begged at first, but he hadn’t the heart to do it or the skill to heal him, only to sit beside him and watch him die, to try to hide the tears as Celegorm asked about Caranthir and Curufin.

He’d been unable to lie convincingly. Tyelko, brash, bold, viciously joyful Tyelko was more observant than Maglor had ever truly given him credit for. In the end, he knew Maglor lied through his teeth, and it only served to make his passing that much more painful. As it sank in, his brother swore furiously at him, calling him a coward, absentee, worthless, gutless, and worse. As his punctured lungs struggled to keep him going, they splattered Maglor with yet another brother’s blood and bile. 

In the end, he’d gone practically kicking and screaming to the Halls. Or possibly to the Void. The Oath wasn’t clear on what would happen upon their deaths should they fail. That was even before they’d ‘succeeded’ in retrieving the Silmarils. Maglor’s mind shied away from what might have become of his brothers now that they had succeeded on two counts but given up ownership of Silmarils. 

He looked down at the empty shell on the ground. The boy’s fea was gone. A mercy. Yes. He didn’t regret it.

He buried the boy.

He took nothing as he moved on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the ever-lovely cloudclipper who listens to my sad headcanons about Maglor! I love comments and critiques, so hmu guys!


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